Govt in talks with industry on continuation of MIP

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PTI

July 4, 2016

UPDATED: July 4, 2016 19:45 IST

From Rishi Ranjan Kala

Raipur, Jul 4 (PTI) The government, which has imposed several measures to check cheap steel imports, is in talks with the industry on altering and continuation of the MIP on steel products, a top official said today.

In February this year, the government imposed a minimum import price (MIP) on 173 steel products ranging between USD 341 to USD 752 per tonne, giving relief to the domestic companies from cheap in-bound shipments specially from China, Korea and Japan.

"People have given us representations, some for addition some for deletion. So we have to examine those," Steel Secretary Aruna Sundararajan said on the sidelines of the first national minerals & mining conclave here.

She further said: "We have to look for two things. First the merit of the argument that industries are making. Then we need to see what is the behaviour. Have imports really increased in certain categories or have they come down in certain categories. So we need to analyse both the situations."

The Secretary said it is a "work in progress" and the ministry is talking to all the stake holders on continuation as well as addition or deletion of steel products from the MIP list.

The MIP expires next month.

"We cannot arbitrarily impose duties. The industry will have to convince us on why we should impose the duty on certain products. It is a process," she added.

On petitions by the industry for anti-dumping and countervailing duties, she said it is a work in progress and the government will have to analyse what can be done with the WTO tools like countervailing and anti-dumping duties.

"So we are trying to persuade the industry to file their petitions in time and provide all the information to the Steel and Commerce Ministries," she said. More PTI RNK ANU

This is unedited, unformatted feed from the Press Trust of India wire.

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